


The Curious Case of the Paradox Loop

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Multi, Superwholock, Time Loop, protagonist Lucifer, the return
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A strange man in a bow tie crashes John and Sherlock's wedding, gets into a fight with a statue, and vanishes. Almost two years earlier in a conjoined reality, the Doctor befriends a detective, his doctor, two demon hunters, and a fallen angel, in an attempt to figure out what Weeping Angels have to do with the spate of kidnappings across Colorado.<br/>Superwholock. Because reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as a discussion on Omegle and merged with an idea I'd already had and became a monstrosity of a fanfiction that I was idiotic enough to start the week before midterms. So let's see how this goes.  
>  _(I don't know how weddings work ssh just let it happen man  
>  just let it happen)_

 

 **PROLOGUE**  

This is happening. 

It's real and sudden and solid and staring John in the face, and _Jesus Christ this is happening_ and it's happening _now_. 

He draws in a breath and is more irritated than anything else at how shaky it is. He's faced gruesome death with more panache and fortitude than this one simple, complicated, terrifying, _brilliant_ day.

John Watson had always expected, somewhere in a far-off corner of his brain, that he'd be married eventually. It's just that those musings had always placed him next to a good-natured, rather _average_ woman. Certainly not the moody, sharp-tongued, better-half-of-a-decade-younger, sociopathic, decidedly _not_ average Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.

But _c'est la vie_ , and John wouldn't trade his for the world. Because if his life had turned out the way he'd once imagined it, it would be ordinary, yes; but, well, it would be _ordinary_. And it doesn't really matter what he wanted then, because he has what he wants _now_ , which is the moody, sharp-tongued,  sociopathic, extraordinary Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. 

John doesn't know which is stranger: the fact that he's going to marry ( _oh God_ ) Sherlock or that Sherlock is going to marry _him_.

And now it's here and it's happening and _okay_ , it's been happening for months, but now it's today, it's _right now_ , and John is nervous as hell. Which he really shouldn't be because honestly, it's _Sherlock_ , and while John is definitely smart enough not to think 'what could happen,' there are only so many things that could go wrong with this understated ceremony in this elegant little chapel in Hertfordshire. Neither of them wanted to make a big deal about it, much to both families' chagrin (though perhaps Mycroft was more intent on irritating his little brother than anything else). So it's only close friends and family members that are invited, and nobody's turning it into a huge affair, and everything's going to be just fine. 

And it really does start out that way. The majority of John's nervousness evaporates with Sherlock's arrival (and good _God,_ if that man bothered to wear a suit more often) and everything is proceeding according to plan. 

( _"Do you, John Watson, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?"_ )

Which is, of course, the cue for the doors to be slammed off their hinges by the force of the body hurled through them. The man tumbles heels over head down the marble parquet before coming to rest at John and Sherlock's feet. John stares, reflexively reaching out to grab Sherlock's elbow. The man lies on his back, staring up at them, panting for breath and beaming. He's bleeding from his nose and mouth, and there's a nasty gash just below his hairline. He's wearing a tweed jacket, a bow tie, and a decidedly crazed expression, and then he leaps to his feet and looks around at the baffled congregation.

"Hello, everyone!" he says, meeting the range of confused and accusatory stares with a wide grin, as if he hasn't just been bodily flung into a wedding with enough force to shatter his spine. "I'm the Doctor, and I object!"

 


	2. The Statue in the Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In recompense for the brevity of the prologue, I give you a very long first chapter. Brace yourself for a fair amount of exposition and a veritable wall of dialogue.
> 
> Enjoy~!

_  
_

**CHAPTER ONE:** THE STATUE IN THE FOREST

* * *

_For a moment there's silence._

_"Do you know him, then?" Mrs. Hudson asks tentatively, after several long awkward seconds have passed. John shakes his head and turns to Sherlock, who looks just about as baffled as he's capable of being._

_"They don't know me," the man (what did he call himself? The Doctor? Doctor_ who _?) says. "At least, not yet."_

_"Who are you?" Pastor Quayle demands._

_"W-what he said," says John, who's seriously considering the possibility that he's cracked and is lying comatose in a hospital ward somewhere. The man twirls around to face them, pulling a leather ID case out of his inner pocket and flashing it open._

_"I'm here about the lighting," he says. Sherlock snatches the case from the "Doctor's" hands, and reads aloud._

_"The Bureau of Rural Electrics?" he says, brow furrowing. He gives the Doctor a deeply suspicious look. "There's no such thing."_

_The Doctor snatches the ID case back. "Of course you'd know that," he says, sounding put-out, as if he just_ knew _Sherlock was going to say that, and now John is_ certain _he's cracked and is lying comatose in a hospital ward somewhere. "Anyways, it's not important," the Doctor continues. "I'm just here to check the lighting and I'll let you get back to—" he waves a hand vaguely— "it. Congratulations, by the way."_

_He gives Sherlock and John a bright grin, twirls around again, and is about to leap back down the aisle when every light in the little chapel goes out._

_The electricity is back again in a second. Mrs. Hudson and Molly have both leapt to their feet, and everyone is staring at the dim little foyer between the nave and the remains of the doors. At first John thinks that someone's come in, but then he realizes that it's not a person. It's a statue, like a Victorian grave monument, almost the size of a person. It's the image of an angel, hands clasped in front of her face, eyes open and staring. John finds himself drawn to those eyes, as if there's something behind them, looking out._

_Hands grab his shoulders and jolt him back to reality. Sherlock is looking at him with concern, as is the Doctor._

_"Don't do that," the Doctor says._

_"He's right," says Sherlock, and John stares at him._

_"You do know him," he says, somewhat accusatorially. He's given up trying to understand what's going on. Sherlock shakes his head._

_"We haven't got time," says the Doctor before John can question Sherlock further, and then spins around yet again, this time to grab Greg by the shoulders to snatch him back from touching the thing. "Don't do that either. It's weak, but it's still dangerous. Everyone, keep your eyes on it, but_ don't _look into its eyes, and don't touch it."_

_"But what is it?"_

_"A Weeping Angel. It's after us for a very long and complicated series of reasons that I haven't the time to explain. I—"_

_The lights go out again. They strobe for a moment and John swears— he_ swears _—_

B _etween the flashes, the thing is moving closer, raising its hands, face twisting into a snarl, coming towards them. John backs up, grabbing on to Sherlock, who wraps his arm around John's shoulders almost absently. He doesn't even look fazed, as if the Attack of the Killer Statues interrupting their wedding is a perfectly ordinary, daily occurrence._

_The lights steady. The angel has made it two-thirds of the way down the aisle._

_"Everybody out," the Doctor says, and he sounds deadly serious. Suddenly he looks it, too, this ridiculous man in a ridiculous bow tie, bleeding from the head and staring down a hunk of living stone._

_Nobody argues._

_The Doctor begins levering the doors back onto their hinges. "Don't follow me back in," he says. "And trust me. I'm a doctor."_

_He turns around, grins at them all, and slams the doors shut, leaving himself alone in the pitch-black chapel with the statue of the angel._

* * *

ONE YEAR, SEVEN MONTHS, TWENTY-ONE DAYS AGO  
 _Boiler Springs, Colorado_

* * *

It was hot.

That was an understatement. The dusty asphalt on the main street of the little town baked in the sun. The air shimmered. Even the weeds were withering. Anyone in their right mind was indoors wearing out the air conditioning. 

A man ran desperately through the woods behind the Boiler Springs Heritage Cemetery. He didn't know what he was running from, but the feeling of being watched had grown too strong and too unnerving as he visited his grandmother's plot at the back of the cemetery, and he'd left in a hurry, only to hear someone — or worse, _something_ — moving through the woods nearby. Something big, and something fast.

So he ran pell-mell through the familiar old woods, footsteps crunching over dry, fallen twigs, breath coming in ragged gasps. Whatever it was was gaining, but it was staying behind him, and no matter where he looked, all he saw was the green gloom between the trees. He careened around a particularly large, twisted pine, and collided with something solid. It felt exactly like slamming into a brick wall would, if he actually knew what it felt like to slam into a brick wall. This was it. He was done for. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

  


* * *

  


"Man, this is ridiculous. We don't even know what we're _looking_ for," Dean complained, poking at the underbrush with a stick. "We need to get back to the Leviathan hunt."

"Yeah, and how many leads has Frank given us in the past month?"

Dean said nothing.

"Exactly," said Sam, "so. Four people vanish without a trace in the last week, no relation between the victims, seemingly random places all over town. Not even a pattern in _timing_. You got any ideas?"

"Nada," said Dean, looking up into the shadowy branches of the trees above his head. "You sure this guy was last seen around here?"

"His wife said he went to the cemetery, and it's the only cemetery in town," Sam said. "The groundskeeper saw him in but never saw him out. He had to have come out the back gate, which leads, well, here." He gestured to the poorly-defined path in front of him, looking around as if expecting to spot a landmark.

"Yeah, so what took him? There's no tracks, no EMF, nothing. Could just be a kidnapper."

"Come on, Dean, when have suspicious disappearances _ever_ just been a kidnapper?"

"It would surprise me. Which is why I think that's what it is."

Sam wasn't listening. He was poking at something in the dry, dead ferns underneath a huge, gnarled old pine tree. "Come and take a look at this."

Dean peered around his brother to the patch of ground he was indicating. There was a rectangular indentation in the dust, as if something solid and heavy had been resting there and had recently been removed.

"You call that a clue?"

"You see anything else around here?"

"Well, no, but c'mon, you have to do better than that," Dean said. 

Sam studied the ground. It did indeed look as if something heavy had been placed in the dirt and then removed. But there were no drag marks or chipped earth. It was as if whatever was put there had been beamed straight upwards. 

Reflexively, Sam jerked his head to the trees above his head. Nothing. But, there, in the corner of his eye, a detail he hadn't noticed before.

There was a statue in the woods, about fifty feet off, between the trees. It was an antique angel in a long robe, carved hands covering her face.

"Dean, look at this." Sam struggled briefly with the underbrush, came out victorious, and approached the statue. He was _certain_ it hadn't been there a minute ago.

"Dude, I didn't notice that. What is it?"

Sam shot him a particularly resentful bitchface. "It's an angel."

"I can see that, smartass. I mean, what's it doing here?"

"Maybe it's a grave marker?" Sam shrugged. "I mean, the cemetery's pretty old, right?"

"Yeah, but," said Dean. "It wasn't there before."

"That's what I thought."

They exchanged glances.

"You think…?"

"Haunted grave?" Sam said. "Could be. I dunno, but if it is, it doesn't have anything to do with the disappearances. Right? I mean, that woman and the couple that got nabbed, they weren't anywhere _near_ here."

"That's where you're wrong."

Dean and Sam whirled around in the direction of the new voice. A young man was picking his way off the path towards them, staring intently at the base of the angel statue. Sam looked. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about it. No name or date. Nothing to indicate its purpose. More interesting, though, was that the man didn't appear to find anything off about their current line of discussion.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" said Sam.

The man reached them and came to a halt. Upon closer inspection, Sam could see he was looking rather the worse for wear. There were scratches on his face and hands, his (grossly outdated) jacket was in shreds, his skin was smudged with dirt, and there was a particularly ugly-looking cut across his forehead. Nevertheless, he gave them a weary but brilliant smile.

"I'm the Doctor," he said. Sam noticed he spoke with an English accent.

"Doctor of what?" said Dean.

"Doctor-ness, I suppose," said the newcomer, not taking his eyes off the statue. "Anyways, not to be rude, but you should be looking at this fellow and not each other. Not the eyes," he added hastily, as Sam glanced back.

"Why?"

"It'll copy itself into your mind and take you over."

"…Oh." Sam regarded the statue warily. "That's, uh, not something we've met before. You know what it is?"

"'Course," said the man. "Fought them all the time. You two seem remarkably at ease. Usually there are more questions. Am I doing something wrong?"

"We're, uh, professionals," Dean supplied. The Doctor glanced at him, very briefly, seemingly pleased by that. 

"Oh, really? We're in the same field then."

"Yeah, and what field is that?"

"Saving the world," the Doctor said, like it should be obvious.

Sam blinked. A hunter then? That would explain his familiarity with the subject, at any rate. "Sounds about right," he said, and the Doctor rewarded him with another tired-yet-earnest grin. "So, you still haven't told us what we're looking at here."

"It's called a Weeping Angel. Old creatures, very old. Their touch will send you backwards in time, unless of course they decide to kill you. Speaking of which… what year is it?"

"Two thousand twelve," Dean said. The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

"You really are professionals. Usually this is around the point people start thinking I'm mad. At any rate, that means this one is pretty weak. It's barely sent me anywhen at all. What _is_ the point of you, then?"

This last seemed to be directed to the angel itself. The Doctor was now circling it as Dean had, a faintly troubled expression on his face.

"You still haven't explained why we're supposed to be staring at it," Sam said.

"Because. It's quantum-locked. If you look away, it can move, and fast."

"That doesn't sound good," said Dean.

"No, it's not. Fortunately this one, like I said, is weak. Otherwise you'd have been as good as dead the moment you set foot in this forest." 

He pulled something out of the inside of his coat. It looked sort of like a hand drill and sort of like a Harry Potter magic wand. Sam stared at it. Who _was_ this guy? He certainly didn't act like any hunter Sam had ever met. He glanced at Dean. Dean shrugged. 

The Doctor waved the thing up and down around the statue. It made a high-pitched noise and emitted a bright green light. Sam was now completely lost.

The Doctor flicked the device and stared at it intently. "Huh."

"What?"

"This isn't the one that sent me."

"That… means there's more of them," said Dean slowly. "That's bad, right?"

"Very," the Doctor said. He sounded entirely too cheerful about it. "You two are here about the disappearances?"

"Yeah."

"You've found your man. Well, angel. Well, alien, but that's not the _point_. I read about the vanishings in the paper. Trust the angels to send me exactly where they need me not to be." He flicked the device again, and it stopped shrilling and emitting light. "All right, you." This was directed at the angel. "Hello. You can see me, I know you can. My name's the Doctor. These are my friends. Do you know what happens to people who hurt the Doctor's friends?"

The statue didn't answer. It was a statue.

"Good," the Doctor said. "Glad we understand each other." He turned on his heels and began traipsing back towards the trail. When he realized his new friends weren't following, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. "Are you coming?"

"You said not to look away from it."

"It's not very strong right now. It knows better than to try anything," the Doctor said, and there was suddenly something cold and hard behind his cheerful voice. "So? You coming?"

Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked at Sam.

"What do you think?" Sam said quietly.

"I think he's a nutcase," said Dean, "but that doesn't mean he's bad news."

"That's optimistic of you."

"We may as well follow him. It's not like we can't take care of ourselves, and somehow I think if he were a Leviathan he wouldn't waste the opportunity to catch us unarmed."

"Fair enough." Sam turned and hurried to catch up with the Doctor. The strange man grinned up at him as he drew near.

"So what are your names?"

"I'm Sam. This is Dean. And you're, Doctor who exactly?"

"Just the Doctor." 

Dean looked at him askance. "And you're, what, a hunter?"

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said, and there was something to his tone that brooked no further questions along that line.

"I'll be honest, that's not a lot to go on, Doc," Dean said.

"It'll have to do, for now," said the Doctor. "Coincidences don't exist in my line of work. The fact that I was sent here by an angel at the exact same time that you arrived… something's going on."

"An angel? You mean like—"

"—the Weeping Angels, of course. Why?"

"We've… had experience with angels before," Sam said, picking his words carefully and shooting a surreptitious glance at Dean. "The holy halo Warrior of God kind. Though most of them are dicks, a lot of them are self-serving, and all the good ones are dead."

 _("What about me?"_ said a voice in the back of his mind. Sam was too tired to try and make it go away and not angry enough to ignore it, so he just thought, _I'll tell you later, shut up_ , which seemed to actually work for once.)

He looked back down and realized the Doctor was staring at him with undisguised interest. "I think there are some things I need to ask you. Not here, though. How far until we're out of this place?"

"About a half-mile," said Dean. Then, "wait a minute, how did you get here?"

"I woke up here. Instantaneous temporospatial transport, remember? Last I knew, I was in Hertfordshire a year and a half from now."

"Yeah, well, welcome to Colorado," Dean muttered. "Enjoy the view."

If the Doctor noticed the sarcasm, he ignored it. "I will, thank you. I—"

He stopped dead. Their walk had carried them around the bend and within view of the cemetery, but that was not what drew the Doctor's attention. Right up against the crumbling cemetery wall was what looked like a bright blue telephone box.

"What the—" Dean scowled at it as if it had personally offended him. "How did that get there? Hey!" 

This last was shouted at the Doctor, for the he had started running full-tilt towards the box. He collided with its front, rattled the handle, and swung the door inward with an audible sigh of delight.

"Hello, you sexy thing! What are you _doing_ here?"

("Nutcase. What did I say?" said Dean.

"Ssh," said Sam.)

They approached the blue box, which the Doctor was still staring into with an expression of utter joy.

"You know what it is?"

The Doctor shut the door, but not before Sam caught a glow of orange light. What even was in there? "Of course!" the Doctor said. "But how did she _get_ here? She can't travel on her own—"

"But what _is_ it?" Sam asked.

The Doctor beamed at him. He looked like a child for whom Christmas, his birthday, and the Fourth of July had all arrived early. "It's my TARDIS," he said.

  


  


  



	3. Questions Are Raised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh gosh I'm so so so sorry for taking so long! Midterms happened and then spring break happened and now I'm back. Hopefully this longish chapter will keep you satisfied. I hope you decided to stick with it!  
> And yeah, Blink seems to be the episode of choice for crossing over. Possibly because the Weeping Angels are just about the most awesome villain **ever**.

"My best friend— Sherlock Holmes— is—"

_Dead._

_Sherlock Holmes. My best friend. The only consulting detective in the world._

_He's—_

_Sherlock's dead._

It had been just over a year since St. Bart's had happened. John moved back to his old (lonely) studio apartment and tried to get on with his life. Usually it was enough. Sometimes it wasn't; sometimes he found himself on the stoop of 221B, half-expecting (lonely) to hear Bach or Beethoven or some sort of unidentifiable angry staccato drifting down the stairs. 

But he never heard the wail of Sherlock's violin, and he never went inside. He made his way robotically through each day at the surgery and fell asleep exhausted (lonely) each night, never feeling rested when he woke up the next morning.

John told himself he was coping.

He wasn't.

* * *

The Doctor had locked the blue telephone box without letting either Sam or Dean look inside, and then had turned and started marching away around the cemetery perimeter. The Winchesters had followed in varying degrees of bemusement, Dean in particular pelting the stranger with as many questions he could think of.

"But what _is_ it?" he demanded.

"I told you," said the Doctor. "My TARDIS. Tee-Ae-Are-Dee-Eye-Ess. Time And Relative Dimensions in Space."

"So what, it's a spaceship?"

"Sort of."

They rounded another corner and came out of the scrubby woods onto the outskirts of Boiler Springs. The mountain town had a generous population of just over fifteen hundred, and looked rather the worse for wear. It had been a mining town in its heyday, but its heyday had long since passed.

"That doesn't really answer my question, Doc."

"It travels in space, yes, but it's not a ship."

"Still doesn't—" 

"Ssh." The Doctor put a finger to his lips and Dean stammered to a halt, bewildered as to how this strange little man in last century's fashions had managed to shush him quite so effectively.

"What's going on?" said Sam, and the Doctor made the same irritable gesture at him. Sam pressed on determinedly. "You've got to give us something."

The Doctor glanced up and down the street. "Is there a general store? A gas station? Yes, of course there is. I'm going to have bought the newspaper there."

"What?" said Sam.

"Huh?" said Dean.

"The newspaper," said the Doctor, patiently, as if explaining something to a small child. "I read about the vanishings in the newspaper."

"But you said you appeared in the forest right before we found you."

"I will have done," the Doctor said. "I haven't yet. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey. It gets very confusing, being a time traveler. I have to keep the loop stable, and I knowabout the vanishings so I _must_ have read it _somewhere_."

"Back up. Time travel?" said Dean.

The Doctor just gave him a look and then headed up the street towards the shabby gas station, which may well have been this town's main source of income. He deposited a large handful of coins, only some of which Sam and Dean recognized, when the attendant told him the paper was a dollar fifty. Among the pile Sam spotted a few quarters, several pounds, one huge Australian fifty-cent coin, and a matte-cobalt half-sphere that he recognized with shock as a flawless star opal. 

With every question this Doctor answered, he raised about fifty that Sam was desperate to ask. He gabbled out the first one that rose to his mind as they headed back out of the convenience store into the glaring sun.

"So what was your space…thing doing in the forest? You seemed sort of surprised to see it."

"That's an excellent question, Samuel," said the Doctor.

" _Don't_ call me Samu—"

"That's one of life's many mysteries that I intend to find out," the Doctor said, ploughing right over Sam, "but it's got to be something I've done. Will do. Will have done. _Whatever._ Point is, the TARDIS can't act on her own, and she can't go anywhere unless someone sends her. I'm one of two people I know who can operate her, so I'm going to assume it was River or I and not something horrible."

Sam gave up trying to follow that and just shook his head, shading his eyes from the sun.

"So we've got two different mysteries, or maybe three," he said. "One is the vanishing people — you say it's those statue things but we still have to stop them even if we know what they are now — and the other is your box."

"She's not just a box," said the Doctor, sounding wounded.

Sam took his turn to talk over the Doctor. "The statues are the more important issue at this point, am I right?"

"Yes," said the Doctor. "They send people back in time and feed on all the wasted potential energy. It says that four people have gone missing—" he rustled through the newspaper— "all in the space of a week. That's a lot, even for an Angel. There's a purpose here, and we've got to find out what that is."

"Ask him if he's sure the victims are actually being sent to a different time," said a voice right next to Sam's ear, and he jumped about a foot in the air. Damn it. He'd been _hoping_ the all-too-literal devil on his shoulder was sitting this one out, but no.

"What do you know about it?" he snapped, and the Doctor raised an eyebrow at him.

"I told you, I've fought—"

"Not _you_ ," said Sam. "Look, just—go away, okay?"

" _And she's buying a stairway to Heaven…_ "

Sam clenched his teeth. "All right, fine."

Lucifer smirked, but mercifully shut his mouth.

"Does anyone want to explain this?" said the Doctor, staring curiously at Sam.

"Long story," Dean said, rubbing his eyes. "My brother's brain is… kind of crowded."

"Oh," said the Doctor, like this was a perfectly satisfactory, reasonable explanation. "So what was that about, Samuel?"

"I _told_ you not to _call_ me—" Sam cut himself off. He was pissed because of his hallucinations, he told himself angrily. It wasn't the Doctor's fault. _Stay calm. Don't get mad. It's what he wants._ "He wants to know if you're sure the people who've vanished have actually been sent to a different time. Does that mean anything to you?"

The Doctor looked thoughtful. "I've never heard of the Weeping Angels sending people somewhere but not somewhen. I suppose it's possible." He looked at Sam askance. "That's a good question. Who exactly is it you've got riding around up there?"

"I'd rather not answer that."

"Aw, Sammy, are you ashamed of me?"

"Yes," said Sam, forcefully, and Lucifer scowled at him, slumping into a sulk. Just wonderful. Sam _really_ didn't want to have to deal with this on top of everything else.

The Doctor folded up the newspaper and looked back up and down the street, biting his lower lip in thought.

"Can you think of anything that would attract what are basically the vultures of the known universe to a town like this?" he said finally.

"What?"

"I mean, Weeping Angels usually go for places where there are a lot of people, or lots of wasted energy, so they can scavenge it. Big cities, or power sources like nuclear plants or disintegrating spaceships. So why here? They have to _want_ something. There's got to be some reason they're here."

Sam looked at Dean. Dean shrugged.

"I got nothing," he said ruefully. "We're just here investigating the disappearances. We've never met these things before."

"Too many questions," said the Doctor, mostly to himself. He frowned, and then, suddenly, brightened. "Oh! I've got an idea!"

"Yeah?" said Dean. He sounded cautious.

"Oh, that's _perfect_. Usually when I need someone they've got all sorts of obligations, or they're stuck in an alternate universe, or they're heading the opposite direction in time as me, or they don't remember me because if they do they'll burst into flames and die, or they got wise and left me, oh, but this, _he's_ perfect," the Doctor said happily. "He's faked his own death and everything. No obligations, no worries, and he hasn't even met me yet! I can't wait."

"Look, sorry if I don't quite follow, Doc," said Dean, "but what exactly are you talking about?"

"There's a friend I have, an old friend. Well, he was an old friend. Well, he will be an old friend. He hasn't met me yet. Wibbly-wobbly, like I said." The Doctor turned to face Sam and Dean, and beamed at them with incongruous delight. "He's the best detective in the world, and his name is Sherlock Holmes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI we will be disregarding Supernatural episodes 7.16 onward for the purposes of this story, because I outlined it before the episode aired. Just so you know.  
> Ciao!


End file.
